to think that gender selection should be legalised in the uk?

[ChocolateBiscuitCake]

I have three glorious boys. I would love to have a girl as well.

I really don't understand why PGD for gender selection is illegal in the UK. I completely accept that it should not be funded through the nhs, but can not see why couples can not pay privately.

You are not choosing eye colour etc, simply the gender of your child to balance your family dynamic.

If ivf couples are allowed to pick/choose/freeze embryos, why is PGD illegal?

Aibu to think that it should be legal in this country? I would not be trying to create a 'superior race', just balance our family with a girl - a daughter for me and DH and a sister for my sons.

I just really struggle with it MrsDeVere, clearly

YABVVU. A child is an individual,not just a boy or a girl. Having watched my gorgeous 1st born be resuscitated at birth, & suffering 2 m/c, I am wholeheartedly of the opinion that ANY child is a gift-sod what sex they are!

Having gone through genetic councelling,the 1 exception I would make is certain conditions that only affect boys/girls. This is a decision being made with future health in mind,not just a parents idea of what a girl/boy will bring them.

To those who think leave as nature intended, then surely you are against IVF in the first place? Or those who 'choose donor sperm/eggs' to have similar characteristics to the parents? Or gay couples who choose to have surrogate children? Or lesbian mums who use donor sperm? All these things are okay to some people and taboo/morally wrong to others. And selecting a gender is no different - taboo to some and not to others. I don't think it right or fair to accept one use of creating a baby over another. The outcome of all the above is a much loved and treasured child.

The ratio of boys:girls (or vice versa) would become horribly unbalanced if we could choose. I would have probably chosen to have "one of each" to experience raising both if I could wave a magic wand, but I have two amazing boys & now I am so glad they are both boys. Choosing your child's gender goes against nature and would have very immediate & negative consequences, in my opinion.

No, I'm not against any of the infertility treatments or parenting arrangements you mention. Sex selection is neither inherent part nor actual purpose of those measures, and I would think it wrong if it became so.

(I mean to choose for anything other than medical reasons).

is there not a cultural issue to consider. There are extremes of certain cultures that just think that girls are inferior

at you trying to compare gender selection to treatment for a condition like infertility!

The difference is that you are not infertile! You have three beautiful children already FFS!

And couples who use surrogacy or donor sperm or whatever are doing it because they are trying to become parents, not because they want to choose the sex of a child that they could have naturally anyway!

That last post of yours OP is horrendous. I cannot believe that you think it is ok to say that.

You don't know how lucky you are OP. I'm going to hide this thread now as I find your attitude quite upsetting.

Those aren't fair comparisons IMO Chocolate. Having IVF to conceive a child because you can't have one otherwise is not the same as rejecting a particular child because it doesn't have a particular characteristic that you desire.

Choosing gender is a frivolous use of medicine to play god IMO - it's totally unnecessary and just panders to people's prejudices. It crosses a significant ethical line.

How would a gay couple have a child naturally

yabvu.

rather intresting debate but the very thought of it makes me want to be sick not in a icky way but an icy hand of fear round my heart sort of a way.

you may not realise but often things start of as the domain of the rich after they have been around awhile they then tend to become more afordable this means that people who can save up ect and want this will do it,we have apsolutly no way of working out who would who wouldnt so there is no way of knowing how popular it would become.

we have evolution for a reason mother nature provides us with what we need be it girls or be it boys.if we are going to mess with this but only a little bit then how do we choose who is ok to select and who isant?

gender selection may mean different things in different areas some people in some areas may prefer girls some may prefer boys in areas where they use this we know and have evidence that it results in some shocking practices most along the lines of trafficing,abuse,one sex being treated as a commodaty the other as a bind.kidnap infanticide inforced poverty,prostitution, forced abortion and murder and so many human right violations its unbelivable every single country where this is the norm ends up with issues like these it infects every area of day to day life that its like a sick twisted virus. these things become culteral norms that because they become normal get a blind eye turned towards them.at the very least we end up where one gender is valued so much more than the other think tudor england and how little girls were respected by laws ect then think places like china or india or saudi

you may be thinking just along the lines of your perfect family but what happens if it spreads to your street then your town then your country then your up shits creak without a paddle and you have just started a massive downturn in humanity.

there is a reason why lots of hospitals in the uk refuse to state the sex of a child befor 20 weeks in areas where gender related abortions are prevalent.

if it would be the end of the world to become pregnant with the sex you dont want then dont have sex or use contraception and hope to god your other children never realise that you would have prefered it if they were a different gender. children are just children all girls dont like pink and all boys arnt sporty the only thing you can almost say for certain about how they will be is that little boys find it easyer to actually hit you in the face when they wee on you.
i feel very sorry for anyone who would contribute towards this in any way other than serious medical need.

a gay couple could have a child by using a surogate or a donar either by way of natural conception or insemination if they wanted but its totally not the same thing as gender selection.

and trying to match a doner with your features is still not the same thing its still left to chance as you dont get to firmly pick you get to attempt to find simmerler eye colour ect but its still not messing with cromasones ect to actually pick.neither is ivf
to surgest that these are in anyway the same is offensive disgusting and factually wrong

Where did I say I would prefer my existing children to be a different gender. So many assumptions!

When ds3 was born I was and still am utterly delighted and in love with him. Didn't find out what he was. Love every little bit of him.

I reflect on whether we would like more children. Yes I would. I would love to have a daughter.

It is possible to become pregnant with a girl if I choose to go down the IVF route.

No less love for my boys.

Thanks Lime, it's not often I get told I've convinced anyone of anything! :)

OP I am totally astounded by your comparison. Infertility not a choice, it is a problem. A medical problem that can be treated with invasive and often traumatic procedures.

Being a particular sex is not a medical problem. FFS. You just cannot compare going through IVF for infertility with using PGD.

Unless gender disappointment is now a psychiatric disorder that requires medical intervention (as opposed to counselling), that is

YANBU, I don't see anything wrong with wanting a balance of the sexes in a family. People get on their high horse, but nobody is forcing it on them. If a couple want to make a choice to have a child of a particular sex it is fine by me. However if we had the sort of culture in the UK where one sex was valued over another, and it would result in overwhelmingly boys, for example, I wouldn't agree. But we are lucky and don't.

I'm really on the fence on this. Personally, I have 3 boys myself and a stepson, I'd love a daughter but I recognise my reasons are purely selfish. to have another child would be very difficult, but the desire is still there.

I think if we could afford it, and could support another child, we would at least consider gender selection - even though the thought makes me uneasy.

fuzzpig I am not suggesting that balancing sexes is a medical problem, only reminding people that IVF used to be frowned upon as "meddling with nature" 20 or so years ago and was widely unaccepted. As was gay men fathering their own genetic children through surrogacy (and still is taboo for many). Sex selection is another extension of IVF and is available in many countries. These countries dont have an imbalance in population! You (other posters) can't compare it to the one child policy in china!! This is where babies are terminated/killed. It is entirely different - pgd is carried out with a cluster of cells...no heartbeat...IMO not a baby.

YAB extremely U and I think somewhat naive to assume that the only reason people would select sex on the basis of balancing a family. Where does this "balancing a family" mindset come from anyway? A family that has only daughters, or only sons isn't defective in some way, you know!

FreckledLeopard Sex selection might not be illegal in the US, but nobody has given any thought to the ethics of it. It is totally unregulated. There is no obligation on doctors to screen out, for example, cases of women being in DV and family abuse situations where they are being pressured to abort female embryos against their will.

Sex selection has been shown to reinforce gender inequality in countries like India and China, with serious potential consequences for social stability. It also sets a precedent for selection of other traits - OP if homosexuality was eventually shown to have a genetic predisposition, would you support a family's choice to abort an embryo that would likely be a gay person?

Medical reasons aside, the fact that someone would choose to go through the discomfort & expense of IVF when they were able to conceive in the good old fashioned way is bonkers.

Totally agree with PP re arguments about pressure felt by any would be child to conform.

There's so much more I could say on this subject but, for now: having a child is a privilege, not a right & the thought that people could actually experience disappointment & grief from having a child of the 'wrong' sex makes my blood boil, to be frank. I know this sounds unsympathetic but, trust me, when your body plays a cruel trick on you & your ovaries run out of eggs & shut up shop before you're even 30 like mine did then you are permitted to feel disappointment & grief.

I do have a DC through egg donation IVF. I could not have given a jot about their sex. I'm just delighted to have been given a chance to be a mummy.

OP- sorry but YABextremelyU!

And I'm not even going to go there with your more recent posts!

How would a gay couple have a child naturally?

They couldn't. That's the point. They don't have an option of having a child naturally. You do, and you should be grateful for that.

But why are one set of rules okay for one and not for another.

And yes, my brother and cousin are both gay.

Gender selection shouldnt be compared to infertiltity no I agree.

However I never know why people get their knickers in a twist about people wanting the opposite sex of child to the one they already have.

I had 3 boys and love every one of them,we are close and I certainly didnt feel in any way disappointed.

However,I did often wonder what a little girl of mine would look like and if she would have my personality.
I wished that I could look forward to the closeness of a Mum and daughter relationship as id had with my Mum.
I wished I could have passed on some of my feistyness to a dd.

As it happened,against the odds-chemo-I had another baby,a girl. I was delighted,as were the rest of my family,her brothers her grandparents her Dad.
We would have been delighted with a healthy baby but it was exciting to have a different sex and dress her up in pink and choose a girls name.
She has brought us all so much joy and was a real comfort to my Nan in her last few years,sitting with her reading to her or chatting.

I had another girl recently and cant believ how lucky I have been.

Its not such a terrible thing to want what you havent got,we all do it in other areas of life.

There are no gender stereotypes in my house,ds3 was a ballet dancer so its not about that,its just nice if you can to have a son and a daughter.

IVF is a hugely invasive process which should be used as an option of last resort for people desperate to become parents. The sucess rate is low, the cost - in every sense - is high.

PGD is a scientific process developed to assist in the birth of children who are not suffering from genetic life limiting conditions.

It's not there to help you 'have' the thing you want. OP - please put these thoughts out of your head. What you want to do, for the purpose you want to do it, is wrong.

Gender disappointment is another matter altogether. We all have dreams for our dcs and if those dreams have to change we may feel a sense of loss. Normal, healthy people will feel that and get the hell over it in due course.

Very rarely does fantasy ever fit the reality,so the 'chosen' child will disappoint in some way.

Very true. There is the assumption that the DD will be your 'best friend' and you will think as one. This is disproved by all the difficult mother/daughter relationships. The DD may take after your MIL and the pair of them get on like a house on fire e.g. my hairdresser has a very difficult relationship with her mother, but gets on fantastically well with her paternal grandmother-who she thinks very wise. The next thing after getting a DD has to be the 'right sort of DD'!
You are less likely to have a good relationship if you have masses of assumptions on how the child comes into the world to fit in with you. Much better to wait and see- than burden the poor child with your expectations.
It is a shame in the affluent west that having a baby is all about 'me'.